Fewer Cincinnatians feel safe in the city compared to two years ago, according to an updated resident perceptions survey commissioned by the city. Perceptions of Cincinnati's overall image and quality of life, as well as being a place to live, work and raise children, also took big hits.
"These are not good results — I think all of us are feeling that keenly," said Council member Anna Albi.
ETC Institute conducted the survey in Oct. 2025. More than 1,200 randomly selected people responded, with respondents matching the city's overall demographics according to gender, income, geography, race and ethnicity.
ETC Institute Director of Community Research Ryan Murray presented the results to City Council's Budget, Finance and Governance Committee Monday.
"As a researcher, I feel very confident in the results, but I need to make sure my audience understands that there's a reliability factor that we've calculated — and so we feel very confident, plus or minus that margin of error of about 3%," Murray said.
You can see the full report at the end of this article; there's also an interactive dashboard with the results, as well as comparison to the survey from 2023 and 2021, on Cincy Insights.
The city plans to conduct focus groups this spring with people who responded to the survey to better understand the "why" behind their responses.
How do residents rank Cincinnati as a place to live?
Satisfaction dropped in nearly every category. Just 32% of respondents say they are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the overall feeling of safety in the city, compared to 40% in 2023. Respondents continue to report higher satisfaction with feelings of safety in their own neighborhood: 50% in 2025 compared to 58% in 2023.
Murray says Cincinnati is not the only city seeing such declines.
"Over the last five years, we've seen a shift downward in perceptions across the country, with big cities and small cities alike," he said.
Despite significant changes among local residents, Cincinnati still ranks higher than peer cities and the national average in some metrics, like satisfaction with the city as a place to live and work.
Cincinnati falls below national satisfaction as a place to raise children and as a place to retire. And when it comes to feelings of safety, Cincinnati ranks well below peer cities and the national average.
Resident top priorities
Respondents were asked to rank city services by importance; combining that with reported satisfaction with each of those services, ETC Institute provides an "Importance-Satisfaction" or "I-S" index.
The top three priorities are those rated with high importance but low satisfaction; this top three has been consistent across all three resident surveys since 2021 (although in the first survey, "code enforcement" was part of a broader category of "neighborhood services"):
- Maintenance of city streets, sidewalks and infrastructure
- Police services
- Code enforcement
Timing of survey responses
Residents responded to the survey in Oct. 2025. Murray and some Council members say the timing could have negatively affected resident perceptions, especially related to public safety.
"We saw shootings decline by 18% last year, and yet we're in the red on this perception of safety," said Council member Albi. "So there's a couple disconnects there. And obviously no feeling is right or wrong — we respect and understand [that]. But as we think about going forward, how can that be impacting the results?"
Residents were responding to the survey amid national criticism of public safety in the city. That's also around the time City Manager Sheryl Long asked Police Chief Teresa Theetge to resign, then placed her on paid leave pending an investigation into the effectiveness of her leadership.
Murray points out that residents reported a decline in feelings of safety, but not in satisfaction with police services.
Perceptions about elected officials are notably different from previous surveys, as well. The first survey was conducted in 2021, not long after three then-Council members were arrested and charged with fraud. Trust in elected officials improved in the next survey in 2023, but declined again in 2025.
This most recent survey was conducted just before a mayoral election between incumbent Aftab Pureval and Cory Bowman (the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance). Although Pureval ended up winning the election easily, the campaign got a lot of media attention.
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